What Kalinda Knew
by Bye11
Summary: "I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost forever." Set after the Season 4 finale. Kalinda watches Will and then decides to have a talk with the one who hurt him.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This one will be a two-shot and this short chapter is just the introduction to the second which will be a Kalinda/Alicia confrontation. The omission of the author of the quote in the summary is intentional. If you don't know the quote, you should look it up, then read the book 1000 times and then obsess over it as you obsess over The Good Wife ;)**

Kalinda knew Will Gardner.

When he had come to tell her the outcome of her interview he had smiled and said:

"Don't look so irritated, K, you're in. Do you want to get a drink?"

"Ok, no, and don't ever call me K again."

"You should give up, we'll become friends, K. I'll surprise you."

He had.

At first, Will had seemed like the kind of man who didn't take relationships seriously. He moved from woman to woman just as Kalinda moved from man to woman and vice versa. And yet, since the beginning there had been a quid she could not place. Will had fun, laughed, looked proud of his conquests but somehow it all looked like second-best.

Until her of course.

The news had caught her by surprise, and it was unheard of in Kalinda's book. Background checks on new associates had always been part of her duties so she had learned everything important about the people in question before they even had the chance to step off the elevator. Instead, bullpen chatter had alerted her to the new junior associate hired together with Cary.

The name had her sprinting for Will's office, demanding why this candidate didn't need to be vetted, why a political wife that had at most glanced at a law court in the previous 13 years was being given this chance. Moreover, she hadn't liked the pang of something resembling guilt at the idea of having to work with a woman that hadn't meant anything that night of long before.

When it came to hiring lawyers, Will was always suspicious and ill-disposed towards the new faces. She expected to find an ally. Just the mere mentioning of Alicia Florrick had been enough to cause a transformation in him.

"I know, Kalinda. We should have talked to you about it. But it was all last-minute."

"Why wasn't she vetted?"

"She has been vetted by the entire Chicago enough, don't you think? And I can assure you there are no skeletons in her closet."

"You can assure me?"

"I've known Alicia since Georgetown. We have been friends ever since."

The warmth in his words was unmistakable and prompted the question.

"Just friends?"

"You two are going to be fast friends."

She hadn't missed the avoiding tactic but at the same time the statement had surprised her so much that she needed to answer to that one first.

"Me, friends with the wife with the big house that talks about the kids and smiles and political events? Please."

"Give her a chance, will you? For me?"

"Why should I?"

"Did you believe me when I told you I would surprise you?"

"No."

He smiled.

"Were you a tiny-bit wrong?"

"..."

"I'll take your silence as an affirmative. If that bought me any trust on your part, I'm cashing it in now. Give Alicia a chance and she'll surprise you even more than I did."

She left his office with an overwhelming curiosity of meeting Alicia Florrick and seeing what had Will so enthralled.

She had never explicitly told him but Will had to have garnered that he had been right again. By the end of that first case, she had discovered in Alicia much more than what she had seen on TV. Observing the two of them together she had also clenched the idea that Will was in love with Alicia and she was not indifferent to Will.

* * *

Kalinda knew what kind of friend Will Gardner was.

He was the one that stood by judges, lawyers and aldermen in their difficult moments.

The first time he had supported one of them, at her raised eyebrow he had answered:

"I always forget that you're new here. In Chicago you need your friends three times: at your wedding, your wake and your first indictment."

Once you became Will Gardner's friend, you could expect him to have pronounced a sort of friendship vow. He took the "for better or for worse" part very seriously.

When it came to Alicia then, Will was willing to be toyed with, stepped on, pushed away and still protect her as well as he could.

Kalinda shared the instinct. Thus she could not blame him.

* * *

Kalinda knew what kind of lawyer Will Gardner was.

A fierce one. An unyielding one. A bloodthirsty and implacable one if necessary.

She had grimaced more than once at his practices, at his strenuous defense of clients that did not deserve any lawyer, least of all one of Will Gardner's caliber. She had cursed herself for finding information that would be used by him to let a case go the "wrong" way, that would for example make women profit from being their husband's murderers.

Then she had just placed the piece in the puzzle. Will was a coherent and loyal being. Once he took on a case, a client, for money or for whim, nothing mattered anymore. Once trust had been placed in him he would not destroy it, no matter how much it cost him to unleash the immoral beast within him.

* * *

Kalinda knew what kind of man Will Gardner was.

To most, the enthusiasm Will placed in representing clients he wanted to fight for was indiscernible. Not to the most brilliant investigator in Chicago. She had never asked him if he had detected her responding hint of a smile. Knowing that one of her bosses was something more than a lawyer was strangely comforting.

Will was used to loose-moral codes and he tolerated them with the easiness of a consummate pro.

But, unlike many others Kalinda had met, worked for, slept with, he had drawn a line.

No friend of Will Gardner could send kids in jail for money.

No friend of Will Gardner could take money from a drug-dealer to help him control territory without him calling him on it, without losing his friendship.

No friend of Will Gardner could betray him without consequences. She had learned it early in her tenure at Lockhart/Gardner. She wondered what the punishment for Alicia would be.

Even after living and breathing the Chicago law for years, Will still cared about the judgment of his character. Alicia had always had the most effective weapons in this sense. A word from her, a disapproving look and Will was suddenly bare, without his expensive counselor-suit, a beaten dog that begged for forgiveness.

* * *

Kalinda knew what kind of boyfriend Will Gardner was.

Considerate but not cheesy, boastful but never without humor, faithful up until She decided to interfere in his life. Willing to step aside without fuss when he was not wanted anymore. Never vindictive or obsessively possessive. Trusting and not afraid to show his sillier side. Ready to protect the man he hated most in the world just to protect her.

* * *

Kalinda knew Will Gardner.

The man in his office, drowning scotch with the vacant eyes and the dejected pose was not Will Gardner.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I didn't expect this fiction to be so popular. You were all quite eager for the second and last chapter of this mini-story. I hope I didn't disappoint you too much. I have written Alicia and Kalinda before but in ASIC the circumstances were much different. So I feel like I'm making another experiment. You must have imagined it but let me be redundant: this one is pure angst. **

For an investigator, finding out when Alicia would be home alone had been a piece of cake. She had fluctuated between letting it go and confronting Alicia head on but Will's sense of profound hopelessness had clenched her choice.

She rang the doorbell. When Alicia opened she was mightily surprised. She didn't wait for the invitation to enter inside the house and instead moved confidently while saying:

"We need to talk."

Alicia had recovered her footing and seemed to have schooled her face into submission. Then she saw the familiar spark of the warrior going for the jugular before she spoke.

"Are you here to judge me? You?"

Alicia was at her best when she was playing the moral high-ground. The hurt wife judged by the whore who slept with her husband.

"Let's have at it, Alicia, once and for all, I slept with your husband before knowing you. I didn't care who you were or what you looked like. You meant nothing to me that night. There? Satisfied?"

"You think that yelling it out loud makes it all better?"

"It doesn't. But that's not what tonight is about."

"You started it."

"I started it because you think you can lord this mistake over my head so that I have to be respectfully silent whenever you say or decide anything. It might have worked before, when there were just you and me. This time there is Will involved."

"Please, Kalinda, spare me the lecture on how loyal you are to him, will you? Cary told me that you were playing both him and Will to get more money and that if you hadn't asked for an unreasonable sum you would have jumped ship with us and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

She wished she had her bat with her. Her rage at Alicia's fake nonchalance was getting out of control. She could have broken one of her very bourgeois vases. The wife of the Governor could afford thousands of those, couldn't she? Instead she channeled her fury in her words.

"We would still be having this conversation. I am a brilliant investigator but Will is not in love with me, he picked me out of a group but I would have found a job anyway and I came highly recommended. Not to mention everything he did for you in these 4 years! Poor Alicia has enough going on so she shouldn't deal with this or that... So you see, our situations would have still been radically different."

The more she got out, the more she felt the role of Will's champion fit her like a glove.

"What did he do to deserve the dagger in his back?"

Alicia had been ready not to hold her punches but her last comment softened her immediately. All of a sudden she was distracted, lost in the thoughts in her head.

"He robbed me of my willpower."

That was an answer she was not expecting but she had understood it all so well. Nick had had the same effect on him and she had hated him for it. Then she thought of Will, of how his love didn't manifest itself obsessively, it didn't involve stalking or terrorizing Alicia, it would never include physical harm and the wrath came back in full force.

"When we're alone together, be it in the office, in an elevator, in the car I gravitate towards him and it takes me time to remember that I have a life, obligations, a family. Will makes it so easy for me to be selfish, to forget about everything else."

"What a horrible fate!"

Alicia ignored her snarky comment and kept going.

"You want to know what triggered this decision? On the night of Peter's election, I saw a man that looked like Will from behind and for a few seconds I wanted to abandon it all and hide in his apartment. I had to do something... Cary's offer was the only way out."

If that was the truth she told herself, fine. It would never work with her.

"It wasn't the only way out and you know it."

"Why don't you enlighten me, you all-knowing Kalinda? What was I supposed to do? Spend every day at my job dreading and anticipating every moment spent with him? Smile for Peter and the press and then cheat on him behind his back? You might not care about who gets hurt but I do."

"Unless it's Will, right?"

For a second she seemed to want to throw the glass on the counter on the floor and smash it into tiny little pieces. Instead, she opened the fridge, poured herself a generous glass of red and sipped it quietly.

"Where are you from, Kalinda? Originally, I mean. Are you from Canada or is just one of your identities from there?"

"Why do you care?"

"I guess it doesn't matter. Whenever you're from you must have studied the classics. When I read Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina I was so incredibly disgusted with them. My parents were going through the divorce and these two women were practically my mother in earlier centuries, flying from one fancy to another without ever being satisfied. It seemed so obvious to me that they were never going to reach whatever they were looking for because nothing is ever built on dreams and fairies. You need hard work."

"Why are you telling me these things?"

"Because you have to understand, Kalinda. I am like them but worse because Peter isn't dull, boring or ugly and Will isn't a young man looking for a sexual education. I was trapped. I am trapped. You have to know how it feels."

She didn't like the path the conversation had taken. It could reach dangerous territories. She had come here to tell Alicia off, to threaten her, to be Will's front. How had Alicia brought her back into a friend-zone?

"How what feels?"

"Not being heard. You tried to tell me your side of the story and I ignored you. I just want someone to know how sorry I am."

"Haven't your big-house friends come out of the woodwork?"

She was ready for her K.O. punch before Alicia actually managed to make her feel bad.

"Sure, and plenty more."

"Good, they're the friends you deserve."

At times, the pain of wielding the blow was comparable to receiving it. This was one of those times. Alicia was stunned and she had perceived the violence of the collision.

Tears had made their way to her opponent's eyes. Hers were similarly wet.

"Is that what you really think?"

"I think that friendship is a much trickier endeavor than people think it is. I think Will is a master at it and look what you've done to him."

"You're right. You want to hear the funniest thing? The days after a triumph should be eons better than the day after a scandal, wouldn't you think? Instead I feel much lonelier now than I felt then. 4 years ago, I could call Will."

"That's not funny at all. It's tragic"

"It is."

Was there something to add? They both got very quiet. Then she decided to reap the chance. This one might very well be the last honest conversation she ever had with Alicia.

"I don't have female friends. I have female lovers, female acquaintances, female bosses, female helpers. I don't have female friends. But you were a friend. I'm sorry things ended like that."

"They would have ended anyway after my decision, wouldn't they?"

That was probably true. She missed Alicia and their connection but she had promised Will she had his back.

"Someone has to be on his side, now that Diane is leaving."

"I'm glad that you're staying at Lockhart/Gardner. Other than Diane, there isn't anyone I trust more to keep an eye on him."

"I'm not you, Alicia, you know that."

"I know."

"We are not going to be lenient."

"I know."

"It's going to be war."

"I know."

"Is it all worth it?"

"Probably not. Often I catch myself wishing I were braver, that I could follow the least-travelled path. Apparently I'm not."

She had felt the same sense of powerlessness at her own incapacity to fight the circumstances. She couldn't help but offer some words of poisonous solace.

"You're not at the bottom yet."

"What?"

"It's not that you're not brave enough, it's that you haven't been pushed to the extremes yet. I'm not saying you've had an easy life. I'm saying that Will has been your safety net. Whatever happened, he was there to cauterize the wound, to help you up. You don't have him anymore. Right now, it's just an hypothetical, you haven't seen him look at you without the regard he has always reserved for you. You haven't seen him not available for your every minuscule problem."

Mrs Florrick was almost scared at asking the question.

"What does that mean?"

"The way I see it, you can hope for the best. Your husband won't cheat or be blinded by the power again, being the First Lady of Illinois will be fun, your firm will boom with morally-acceptable clients. Your secretaries won't overhear labor negotiations, your investigator will stay as chipper as she is now. You and Cary will be great partners. But, more realistically, something will happen. You will be ashamed enough for what you've done that you won't call me or Will. Peter will be busy with his Governorship, your children will be at college and you won't want to burden them, Cary will be in a tough case, and it will be the last strike. You will want to run away and this time you'll actually do it."

"So you're saying that after another catastrophe in my life there'll be some light at the end of the tunnel?"

Alicia had never showed her this face before. Eager for the answer. Hopeful like a child for the happy ending as the conclusion of the story.

Some part of her would have wanted to conceal her the truth, to let her indulge a little bit more in her delusions. To leave the apartment without leaving utter desolation behind her. To not let the squalor of her future engulf the woman that used to be her friend.

Will's hollow eyes flashed into her mind. Nobody had done him any such courtesy. She took the courage and dropped the bomb.

"No, because by then, you'll have nothing to run off to."

** A/N: I suspect this one might be controversial but I can assure you that I'm open also to negative comments.**


End file.
